though phrasing it very tactfully, he suggested they get it over with quickly. Uncle Lajos then unexpectedly drew me into service. He said he would like “a little word” with me. He hauled me off to a secluded corner of the room and pinned me up against a cupboard, face-to-face with him. He started off by saying that, as I knew, my father would “be leaving us” tomorrow. I said I knew that. Next he wanted to know whether I was going to miss his being here. Though a bit annoyed by the question, I answered, “Naturally.” Feeling this was in some way not quite enough, I immediately supplemented it with, “A lot.” With that he merely nodded profusely for a while, a pained expression on his face.
Next, though, I learned a couple of intriguing and surprising things from him. For instance, that the time of my life that he said was “the happy, carefree years of childhood” had now drawn to a close for me with today’s sadness. No doubt I had not yet considered it like that, he said. I admitted that I hadn’t. All the same, he carried on, no doubt his words did not come as any great surprise to me. They didn’t, I said. He then brought to my attention that with my father’s departure my stepmother would be left without support, and although the family “would keep an eye on us,” from now on I was going to be her mainstay. To be sure, he said, I would be discovering all too soon “what worry and self-denial are.” It was obvious that from now on my lot could not go on as well as it had up till now, and he did not wish to make any secret about that, as he was talking to me “man-to-man.” “You too,” he said, “are now a part of the shared Jewish fate,” and he then went on to elaborate on that, remarking that this fate was one of “unbroken persecution that has lasted for millennia,” which the Jews “have to accept with fortitude and self-sacrificing forbearance,” since God has meted it out to them for their past sins, so for that very reason from Him alone could mercy be expected, but until then He in turn expects of us that, in this grave situation, we all stand our ground on the place He has marked out for us “in accordance with our strengths and abilities.” I, for instance, I was informed, would have to hold my own as head of the family in the future. He inquired whether I sensed the strength and readiness within myself to do that. Though I did not quite follow the train of thought that had led up to this, particularly what he said about the Jews, their sins, and their God, I still grasped somehow what he was driving at. So I said, “Yes.” He seemed contented. Good lad, he said. He always knew I was a clever boy, endowed with “profound feelings and a deep sense of responsibility,” which in the midst of so many afflictions, to some degree, represented a solace for him, as was clear from what he had said. Grasping my chin with his fingers, the uppers of which were covered in tufts of hair and the undersides slightly moist with sweat, he now tipped my face upward, and in a quiet, slightly trembling voice said the following: “Your father is preparing to set off on a long journey. Have you prayed for him?” There was a hint of severity in his gaze, and it may have been this that awakened in me a keen sense of negligence toward my father, because, to be sure, I would never have thought of that of my own accord. Now that he had aroused it within me, however, I suddenly began to feel it as a burden, like some kind of debt, and in order to free myself of that I confessed, “No, I haven’t.” “Come with me,” he said.
I had to accompany him over to the room on the courtyard side. There we prayed, surrounded by a few shabby pieces of furniture that were no longer in use. Uncle Lajos first placed a little, round black cap with a silky sheen on the back of his head at the spot where his thinning gray hair formed a tiny bald patch. I too had to bring along my cap from the hall. Next he produced a black-bound, red-bordered little